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Bush’s War on Pot

More than two decades after it was launched in response to the spread of crack cocaine — and in the midst of a brand-new wave of methamphetamine use sweeping the country — the government crackdown has shifted from hard drugs to marijuana. Pot now accounts for nearly half of drug arrests nationwide — up from barely a quarter of all busts a decade ago. Spurred by a Supreme Court decision in June affirming the right of federal agents to crack down on medical marijuana, the Drug Enforcement Administration has launched a series of high-profile raids against pot clinics in California, and police in New York, Memphis and Philadelphia have been waging major offensives against pot smokers that are racking up thousands of arrests.

By almost any measure, however, the war has been as monumental a failure as the invasion of Iraq.

Harsh. Nice. (Although I’d say that the drug war is worse failure.)

“For Walters, it’s all marijuana, all the time,” says Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He is reinforcing the atmosphere that marijuana is the drug we should care about, and that the government will do everything it can, including locking everyone up, if that’s what it comes to.”